representations, and in the same spirit overwhelming what he deemed falsehood by moral denunciation and a succession of pictures appalling or repulsive. In his prose, so many metaphors, so many allegorical miniatures. Taylor, eminently discursive, accumulative, and (to use one of his own words) agglomerative; still more rich in images than Milton himself, but images of Fancy, and presented to the common and passive eye, rather than to the eye of the imagination. Whether supporting or assailing, he makes his way either by argument or by appeals to the affections, unsurpassed even by the Schoolmen in subtlety, ability, and logical wit, and unrivalled by the most rhetorical of the fathers in the copiousness and vividness of his expression and illustrations. Here words that convey feelings, and words that flash images, and words of abstract notion, flow together, and at once whirl and rush onward like a stream, at once rapid and full of eddies; and yet still, interfused here and there, we see a tongue or islet of smooth water, with some picture in it of earth or sky, landscape or living group of quiet beauty.

"Differing, then, so widely, and almost contrariantly, wherein did these great men agree? wherein did they resemble each other? In Genius, in Learning, in unfeigned Piety, in blameless Purity of Life, and in benovolent aspirations and purposes for the moral and temporal improvement of their fellow-creatures! Both of them wrote a Latin Accidence, to render education more easy and less painful to children; both of them composed hymns and psalms proportioned to the capacity of common congregations; both, nearly at the same time, set the glorious example of publicly recommending and supporting general Toleration, and the Liberty both of the Pulpit and the Press."

In our selection, then, of John Bunyan as the hero of our paper, we must not be understood to express any opinion whatever on any of the great questions on which the Christian world is divided; we ask not whether he is to be regarded as layman or ordained minister; we fall not out with those who were fond, in the latter part of his life, of calling him Bishop Bunyan, holding, that if we find him teaching apostolic doctrine, and not offending against the ordinances of society, it falls not within our province to affect to discuss or determine the serious questions which perplex divines and theologians. In thinking of the highest order of minds, where the affections are

not altogether shut out from our view by the nature of the individual's pursuits, we find the life of the man almost inseparable from his works. Each reflects illustration on the other. This is the case remarkably with Milton, whose life, notwithstanding all that has been done by Hayley and by Simmons, if studied with careful attention to all the hints which his poems give, would greatly increase the interest of the poems. In the "Samson Agonistes" we cannot but read much of his own history, and the Latin poems are almost professedly biographical.

Without classing either Bunyan or Cowper with that highest rank of intellect, we regard their works and themselves as one. It is fortunate for Cowper's reputation that his letters have been preserved; they interpret his playfulness, and they soften and reconcile some exceedingly harsh traits in that part of his poetry which was first published-we mean the poems in rhyme, his first volume, given to the public under the ominous auspices, and with an austere preface, by Newton. Had these poems been the only fruit of his genius, and had we of his prose nothing but the biogra phical fragment which records the commencement of his insanity, with the strange lights from other worlds gleaming through the record, and only making the gloom seem more intense and more hopeless, we should in reality have been entirely misled as to his character and powers. Imperfect information is worse than none, and such a document as Cowper's account of his insanity, uncorrected by the private letters, would have just furnished the kind of evidence which each man's imagination would piece out into something most entirely unlike the proper character of the man. Indeed we do not think, in estimating Cowper's character, quite enough is allowed for his insanity. The contrasts with habitual feeling, which are often exhibited in insanity, are familiar to every one who has seen sufferers under some of the many diseases which are called by this generic name. His best friends are by the lunatic regarded as his bitterest and most implacable enemics. A German critic, who has ana lysed, with great subtlety, some of Shakspeare's characters, tells us that the wild, coarse language given to Ophelia is not only evidence of her reason being overthrown, but of the purity of her mind before the reasoning

powers were gone; that some law of contrast exists; and that insanity, far from revealing, as drunkenness is said to do, the real secrets of the bosom, perverts every feeling and every thought. If this be so, it may perhaps suggest how Cowper, who believed in the unlimited mercy of God, regarded himself as excluded from the hope of salvation. The "Memoir" of Cowper, to which we advert, is one that bears some resemblance in its character to Bunyan's "Grace Abounding," the narrative on which every biography of Bunyan is founded.

Bunyan was born in the year 1628, at Elstow, a village near Bedford. His "descent was," in his own language, "of a low and inconsiderable generation. My father's house being of that rank that is meanest and most despised of all the families of the land." The father is stated in a history of Bedfordshire to have been bred to the business of a brazier, and to have worked as a journeyman in Bedford. Brazier seems but a more courteous form of language to express what is commonly meant by tinker. It would appear that Bunyan's father did not pursue his craft as an itinerant, and that he sent his son to school, and had him taught to read and write. From all this Southey finds some difficulty in accounting for Bunyan's language in describing his original position as of such extreme meanness; and Scott suggests, as a solution of the difficulty, -supporting the conjecture by a passage in Bunyan's autobiography, which does not quite sustain his view-that the family were originally gypsies. We shall, when we touch on that passage in the course of our narrative, show our reasons for differing from Sir Walter. At school, Bunyan attended "according to the rate of other poor men's children; though, to my shame I confess, I did soon lose what I had learned even almost utterly." Bunyan's nar rative of his early life was written in advanced age, and while there can be no doubt of its general truth, it would be unjust to regard all its statements as having the kind of accuracy which is ascribed to them by several of his biographers. Something is to be allowed for the use of a peculiar religious dialect, employed for the purpose of conveying a doctrine at the same time that it details a fact, and perhaps exaggerates the fact, lest the doctrine

That we

should seem understated. should translate Bunyan's words in describing "his natural life" "before the gracious work of conversion in his soul," into something different from the full force of the language, will probably be admitted by most of our readers, when we tell them, that he studiously uses Scripture phraseology, the strongest he can find. We should not think ourselves warranted in lowering the statement to anything less than the author's words, were he using his own words, but where he uses the language of the inspired writers, we feel it absolutely necessary to believe it used with qualifications and accommodations, all which we must take into consideration, and limit this adopted phraseology by such facts as we find stated in ordinary language. We must separate the feeling, with which his past life is recollected by him, and which feeling we regard as alone embodied in the scriptural expressions, from the facts which he would detail. Words that would indicate general profligacy, we find, by other circumstances, meant what is bad enough, "that from a child he had but few equals for cursing, swearing, lying, and blaspheming the holy name of God."

Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners, is the title of Bunyan's narrative of his own life. This very title would render somewhat of over-statement to be expected. Exaggerate the sin, and you may make the grace more abundant. Calm, and apparently subdued as the old man's spirit was, yet the very title of his tract, making all allowance for the conventional language of the period in which he wrote, is that of a person under strong and habitual excitement. We admire and we should anxiously wish to share the feeling, but we cannot forbear saying, that it, like all other strong feelings, colours all that it beholds; that, vivid as the dreams of his childhood may have been, we think it by no means unlikely that in his recollections of them in after life, they assumed more intense vividness, that, in fact, in these biographical records, by a man of highly imaginative power, much of what seems to be but remembered is almost the creation of the moment, in which what is called the record is composed; that in the case of Bunyan as in that of Goethe, we have, without, however, the consciousness of the half self-deception, which

the German's title-page exhibits, an inseparable blending of truth and fiction. The divine dreamer was, it would seem, from his early childhood, the victim of dreams, and the scenery of his visions was always taken from the other world.

"Yea, so settled and rooted was I in these things, that they became as a second nature to me; the which, as I have also with soberness considered since, did so offend the Lord, that even in my childhood he did scare and affrighten me with fearful dreams, and did terrify me with fearful visions: for often, after I had spent this and the other day in sin, I have in my bed been greatly afflicted while asleep with the apprehensions of devils and wicked spirits, who still, as I then thought, laboured to draw me away with them, of which I should never be rid.

"Also, I should at these years be greatly afflicted and troubled with the thoughts of the fearful torments of hellfire; still fearing that it would be my lot to be found at last among those devils and hellish fiends, who are there bound down with the chains of bonds and darkness, unto the judgment of the great day.

"These things, I say, when I was but a child but nine or ten years old, did so distress my soul, that then, in the midst of my many sports and childish vanities, amidst my vain companions, I was often much cast down and afflicted in my mind therewith; yet could I not let go my sins. Yea, I was also then so overcome with despair of life and heaven, that I should often wish, either that there had been no hell, or that I had been a devil; supposing they were only tormentors; but if it must needs be that I went thither, I might be rather a tormentor than to be tormented myself.

"A while after, these terrible dreams did leave me, which also I soon forgot; for my pleasures did quickly cut off the remembrance of them as if they had never been; wherefore, with more greediness, according to the strength of nature, I did still let loose the reins of my lust, and delighted in all transgressions against the law of God; so that, until I came to the state of marriage, I was the very ringleader of all the youth that kept me company, in all manner of vice and ungodliness."

It is not improbable, that the dreams which re-appeared in such brightness in his successive works, were in some cases recollections of actual dreams of childhood; nor is it less likely, that

when he sought to bring back his childhood, and make it the distinct subject of thought, he should unconsciously exercise the marvellous faculty which gives shape and almost substance to what would, in the case of ordinary men, be classed with the mere vapours of the night. night. That Bunyan spoke with entire truth, when he told much of his early life to "those whom God accounted him worthy to beget to faith by his ministry in the Word," is a fact of which we have no doubt whatever, and we place entire reliance on all such details as are properly the subject of observation or of evidence. But it is scarce possible to regard any records of dreams and visions as coming within such a classification. The shadows of clouds might almost as easily be described. We are to remember, too, in forming a judgment on this matter, not merely Bunyan's habit of clothing all his thoughts in something of allegory; but the purpose of his communication to his followers. "It is profitable at large for Christians to be often calling to mind the very beginnings of grace with their souls." He writes to them from prison, and the language is altogether framed from passages of Scripture.

"Once again," he says, "as before from the tops Shenir and Hermon, so now from the lion's den and the mountains of the leopards, I have

sent you here inclosed a drop of that honey that I have taken out of the carcase of a lion, Judges, xiv. 5-8. I have eaten thereof myself, and am much refreshed thereby. Temptations, when we meet them at first, are as the lion that roared upon Samson; but if we overcome them, the next time we see them, we shall find a nest of honey within them. The Philistines understood me not. It is something; a rela tion of the work of God upon my soul, even from the very first till wherein you may perceive my castings down, and risings up; for he woundeth, and his hands make whole. It is written in the Scripture, Isa. xxxviii. 16—“ The father to the children shall make known the truth of God." Yea, it was for this reason I lay so long at Sinai, Lev. iv. 10, 11, to see the fire, and the cloud, and darkness, that I might fear the Lord all the days of my life upon earth, and tell of his wondrous works to my children, Psa. lxxviii. 3, 4, 5."

now,

The purposes, then, of God in His dealings with His people, and the way

in which thoughts originate in the mind, are the proper subjects of this "Epistle" of Bunyan's; and there is seen in it everywhere a disposition, as far as is at all possible, to refer everything to a power operating without our will or against it. It is not surprising, therefore, that he looks for something like inspiration in everything that is seemingly least connected with the ordinary on-goings of the mental powers. He looks for miracles, and he finds them; but were it not for his extraordinary strength of mind, and for his logical powers, of an order rarely surpassed, there would have been the danger of this habit degenerating into the most servile or baseless superstition. The auguries and oracles of old pagan days would find a justification in this strange habit of seeking guidance from some capricious interpretation of dreams and omens; and we think even the language of Scripture, applied in the way he applied it, by persons of mental power inferior to his, not less likely to lead into absurdity and error. Bunyan, however, had this security against anything of important error; he seized some one truth, and this, once fixed in his mind, he never parted with. However derived, and it sometimes was made out by inferences depending each on the other, in what seemed argument, and was but analogy, yet, once attained, it became the measure of every other proposition with which it could be compared. There is a passage in this narrative which illustrates what we mean. He tells us that

"He was made to see something concerning the beasts that Moses counted clean and unclean. Now I read that the clean beasts chewed; that is, thought I, they show us that we must feed on the Word of God. They also parted the hoof; I thought that signified we must part, if we would be saved, with the ways of ungodly men.

I

thought the hare to be a type of those who talk of the Word, yet walk in the ways of sin; and that the swine was like him that parted with his outward pollution, but still wanted the Word of Faith, without which there would be no way of salvation, let a man be never so devout."

In some such way as this is everything in the Bible made a sort of symbol, not altogether arbitrarily, for Bunyan, most often, is working out some suggestion of the New Testament, arguing

VOL. XXXVII.-NO. CCXX.

from the antitype first to the type; but then from the type deducing inferences often with extreme ingenuity, but their application being always limited by some fixed truth otherwise ascertained. Had Bunyan been a reader of the Talmud, this sort of allegorising and symbolising would not have been strange. As it was the fancies were altogether his own. We cannot render Bunyan known to our readers, nor will the "Pilgrim's Progress" be altogether understood, without our giving some account of his life. Though he appears to have cursed and sworn, and to have robbed orchards-this last is perhaps an unfair inference from his ascribing this feat to the hero of one of his spiritual romances he felt a shock which made him tremble when he saw men professing religion act wickedly. He had a providential escape, which he thankfully records. He fell into a creek of the sea, and narrowly escaped drowning. He fell out of a boat, in the Bedford river, and was saved. He struck an adder on the back with a stick, and having stunned her, plucked out the sting with his fingers, "by which act," he adds, "had not God been merciful to me, I might, by my desperateness, have brought myself to my end."

We next find Bunyan in the army. It is probable that it was while in the army he felt "those strokes upon his spirit which made his heart ache," that are told us of in his autobiography, when he witnessed the reprobate conduct of men professing religion. In his life of Mr. Badman, he gives an instance of such profligacy, which we suppose was common enough either in the royal or parliamentary armies. Bunyan, writing years after the Restoration, did not feel it necessary in his tract to say with which side he was engaged, but there can be no doubt it was Cromwell's. Among them the contrast of religion with profligacy was more likely to exist and to force itself on his attention, and Bunyan was, on the whole, likely to have been benefited in his moral nature, from being taken, even for awhile, from the streets of Bedford. Hume's description of the parliamentary army is probably pretty accurate, and to have been removed from the streets of Bedford, where he passed his time cursing and swearing (if we are to take his own account as accurate), or, when he was better employed, in earning his bread

2 F

as a tinker, herding with gypsies, and stealing poultry from farm-yards, and to be placed even under such irregular discipline as he must have been forced into, could not but have been a change for the better. Ascribe as much as you will to hypocrisy and fanaticism, there must remain much of what influenced the mind to good in such devotional exercises as occupied Cromwell's army.

"Never surely was a more singular army assembled, than that which was now set on foot by the parliament. To the greater number of the regiments, chaplains were not appointed. The officers assumed the spiritual duty, and united it with their military functions. During the intervals of action, they occupied themselves in sermons, prayers, exhortations; and the same emulation, there, attended them, which, in the field, is so necessary to support the honour of that profession. Rapturous ecstasies supplied the place of study and reflection; and while the zealous devotees poured out their thoughts in unpremeditated harangues, they mistook that eloquence, which to their own surprise, as well as that of others, flowed in upon them, for divine illuminations, and for illapses of the Holy Spirit. Wherever they were quartered, they excluded the minister from his pulpit; and usurping his place, conveyed their sentiments to the audience, with all the authority which followed their power, their valour, and their military exploits, united to their appearing zeal and fervour. The private soldiers, seized with the same spirit, employed their vacant hours in prayer, in perusing the Holy Scriptures, in ghostly conferences, where they compared the progress of their souls in grace, and mutually stimulated each other to farther advances in the great work of their salvation. When they were marching to battle, the whole field resounded, as well with psalms and spiritual songs adapted to the occasion, as with the instruments of military music; and every man endeavoured to drown the sense of present danger, in the prospect of that crown of glory which was set before him. In so holy a cause, wounds were esteemed meritorious; death, martyrdom; and the hurry and dangers of action, instead of banishing their pious visions, rather served to impress their minds more strongly with them."-Hume's England.

In Philip's life of Bunyan, we find it distinctly stated, on the authority of a sketch of his life, preserved in the

British Museum, written by a person who knew Bunyan, that at the siege of Leicester he was called out to attack the town, then defended by the King's forces against the parliamentarians. This seems to decide what was before doubtful, and what his biographers can scarcely be blamed for misapprehending. Bunyan mentions the fact in the same way as the author of the sketch which Mr. Philip quotes, but does not mention the place. Others add the place; but this was not unlikely to mislead those who looked only at Hume, for Leicester was twice besieged in the civil war, first by the King's troops, and taken; and after the battle of Naseby, by the parliamentarians, and this last siege Hume says nothing of. At this siege occurred an incident which we must tell in Bunyan's own words::

"This also have I taken notice of with thanksgiving: when I was a soldier, I, with others, were drawn out to go to such a place to besiege it; but when I was just ready to go, one of the company desired to go in my room; to which when I had consented, he took my place, and coming to the siege, as he stood sentinel, he was shot into the head with a musket bullet, and died.

"Here, as I said, were judgments and mercy; but neither of them did awake my soul to righteousness; wherefore I sinned still, and grew more and more rebellious against God, and careless of my own salvation."

It has been suggested that Bunyan's military experience probably furnished him with some of the imagery in his

Holy War." Sir Walter Scott falls out with this supposition, on, we think, insufficient grounds. The military operations are described," he says, "inaccurately, and the arms and armour are of earlier date than those used in the civil war." Bunyan's arms and armour for the assailants and defendants of the town of Mansoul are like the arms and armour which the old allegorists invented for their warriors; Fear and Horror and Discord formed part, and iron and brass another part of the same inseparable mass, in the same way as Tacitus describes hostile districts divided mutuo metu et montibus. We are not to expect accounts of actual military expedients, but something suggested by them, and which are more likely to occur to a man who has been in the field. There is a tone of excite